in natural history, a name given ven to those living creatures which, by a monstrous formation of their generative parts, seem (for it is only seeming) to unite in themselves the two sexes, that of the male and of the female. This *lusus naturae*, this defect, or perhaps redundancy, in the animal-structure, is described by medical authors in the following manner.

There is a depravation in the structure of the parts intended by nature for propagation, when, besides those concealed parts that are found necessary for the discharge of prolific functions, the *pudenda* of the other sex likewise appear. This monstrous production of nature is diversified in four different ways; of which three appear in males and one in females. In men, the female pudendum, clothed with hair, sometimes appears contiguous to the perineum; at other times, in the middle of the scrotum; at other times, which constitutes the third diversity, through that part itself which in the midst of the scrotum exhibits the form of a pudendum, urine is emitted. Near that part which is the seat of puberty, and above the pudendum, even in females, the masculine genitals appear in some conspicuous in all their three forms, one resembling the *viretram* or yard, the other like the two testicles; but for the most part it happens, that, of the two instruments of generation, one is feeble and inert; and it is extremely rare that both are found sufficiently valid and proper for seats of love; nay, even in a great many, both these members are deficient and impotent, so that they can perform the office neither of a male nor of a female.

With respect to them, it appears, from a collation of all the circumstances which have been observed by naturalists worthy of credit, that there is no such thing as a perfect *androgyn*, or real hermaphrodite; that is to say, a living creature which, by its unnatural, or rather preternatural structure, possesses the genuine powers of both sexes, in such a manner as to be qualified for performing the functions of either with facility: the irregularity of their fabrication almost always consists in something superfluous added to one of the two sexes, which gives it the appearance of the other, without bestowing the real and characteristic distinction; and every *hermaphrodite* is almost always a very woman. Since this monstrous exhibition of nature is not such as to abrogate the rights or destroy the character of humanity amongst human beings, this involuntary misfortune implies no right to deprive those upon whom it is inflicted by nature, of the privileges natural to every citizen; and as this deficiency is no more infectious than any other corporal mutilation, it is not easy to see why marriage should be prohibited to one of these unhappy beings, merely on account of its equivocal appearance, which acts in the character of its prevailing sex. If such a creature, by the defect of its construction, should be barren; this does not infer any right of dissolving the marriage which it may have contracted, more than the same sterility proceeding from any cause whether known or unknown, if his or her comfort should not on that account require a divorce. It is only the licentious abuse either of one or the other sex which can be subjected to the animadversion of the police. See *Hermaphrodite*.

Such are the sentiments of the authors of the French Encyclopédie. After all, we cannot forbear to add, that from such heterogeneous matches nature seems to recoil with innate and inextinguishable horror. Nor are any of these invincible aversions implanted in our frame without a final cause worthy of its Author. We would gladly ask these free-thinking gentlemen, in cases where the sexes are so naturally confounded, how the police can, by its most severe and rigorous animadversion, either detect or prevent those licentious abuses against which they remonstrate? Since, therefore, an evil so baneful to human society could no otherwise be prevented than by the sanction of Nature against such horrible conjunctions, the instinctive antipathy which they inspire was highly worthy of her wisdom and purity.

*Androgynes*, in ancient mythology, creatures of whom, according to the fable, each individual possessed the powers and characters of both sexes, having two heads, four arms, and two feet. The word itself is compounded of two Greek radical words; *άνδρας*, in genitive *άνδρος*, a male; and *γυνή*, a female. Many of the rabbinical writers pretend, that Adam was created double, one body being male, the other female, which in their origin not being essentially joined, God afterwards did nothing but separate them.

The gods, says Plato in his *Banquet*, had formed the structure of man round, with two bodies and two sexes. This fantastic being, possessing in itself the whole human system, was endowed with a gigantic force, which rendered it insolent, inasmuch that it resolved to make war against the gods. Jupiter, exasperated, was going to destroy it; but, sorry at the same time to annihilate the human race, he satisfied himself with debilitating this double being, by disjoining the male from the female, and leaving each half to subsist with its own powers alone. He assigned to Apollo the task of repolishing these two half bodies, and of extending their skins so that their whole surface might be covered. Apollo obeyed, and fastened it at the *umbilicus*: If this half should still rebel, it was once more to be subdivided by another section, which would only leave it one of the parts of which it was then constituted; and even this fourth of a man was to be annihilated, if it should persist in its obstinacy and mischief. The idea of these *androgynes* might well be borrowed from a passage in Moses, where that historian of the birth and infancy of nature describes Adam as calling Eve *bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh*. However this may be, the fable of Plato has been used with great ingenuity by a French poet, who has been rendered almost as conspicuous by his misfortunes as by his verses. With the ancient philosopher, he attributes the propensity which attracts one of the sexes towards the other, to the natural ardour which each half of the *androgyn* feels for reunion; and their inconstancy, to the difficulty which each of the separated parts encounters in its efforts to recover its proper and original half. If a woman appears to us amiable, we instantly imagine her to be that moiety with whom we should only have constituted one whole, had it not been for the insolence of our original double-sexed progenitor:

The heart, with fond credulity impressed, Tells us the half is found, and hopes for rest; But 'tis our curse, that sad experience shows, We neither find our half, nor gain repose.

*Androgy nous*, in zoology, an appellation given to animals which have both the male and female sex. sex in the same individual.—In botany, the term is applied to such plants as bear both male and female flowers on the same root.